Reaction Formation – anxiety producing emotions and thoughts (like knowing your bacon cheeseburger is the direct result of genocide on factory farms) are mastered by exaggerating the opposing tendency.

Isolation – when people want to do something, but they know it is wrong, it is really easy to remove inconvenient emotions (thus, “So what? Like I can stop factory farms. Here, have some more bacon. Extra crispy!”)

Rationalization – in order to avoid an uncomfortable truth, people make up nonsense at the other extreme (“Vegans destroy the ecosystem by eating up all the plants that animals need to survive.”)

Intellectualization – focusing on areas surrounding the issue to avoid the anxiety of the issue itself (“But animals aren’t sentient beings.” or this horror show that actually happened: “I don’t know who asked the sow if she wanted to turn around!” to justify crate farming!)

Denial – it’s not just a river in Egypt (“PETA fakes those videos to fool the treehuggers into donating to them. Now come on, I cooked this bacon special for you. You can eat it just this once. Don’t insult me.”)

Pretty heavy stuff.

Vegans should bear in mind, next time they find themselves under assault for saying “Nah, I’ll stick with a salad. And I just want to make sure – no cheese on that, right?”, that some or all of this stuff might actually be going on.

Indeed, heavy stuff.

We encourage you to read the article – which, again, is fantastic in the “WAY above and beyond” sense and does a baller job of translating verbose psychobabble into small, tasty, easy-to-digest bites.

And we also ask you to consider

Other Areas Where Freudian Stuff Might Be Happening

For example:

“Get a Mac” – has the other person questioned themselves as to why they spent a whole lot more money on something that may or may not be better, just because they got a lot of flak on social media at one point? Are they worried they might have done something to “impress the cool kids” without checking in with themselves?

For political discussions – does it bother you more that (Trump / Clinton / Johnson) exist in the first place? Or that people just as smart as you, love the one you hate – AND can intelligently explain why in a way that convincingly challenges your own beliefs?

Offering upsells you don’t like doing – are you bugged more that you agreed to do it, or that others’ persistently chanting “don’t leave money on the table” and “f*#% passion, BUILD A TEAM!” goaded you to give in?

Being an introvert – is that person telling you to stop being “antisocial” and “a loner” creating a bunch of noise to avoid introspection that might reveal something they don’t like about themselves? Maybe they’re really an introvert themselves but are still viscerally fearing the lectures they got as children to “put the book down and live life”. (WHOA.)

If This Made You Stop And Think, Good!

And,

If It Bothered You, GREAT!

Bottom line: it’s you, BECAUSE it’s them.

Here’s the gift.

This creates the first step toward the greatest communication skill of all – being able to see through another person’s eyes AND build an argument that supports THEIR point of view.